Canada has
been suffering from an acute case of Big Brotherism for years.
Canadian life has increasingly been suffocated by the hand of
government intrusion into every aspect of life.

Well, big
brother seems to have been sent packing, at least for a while.
Voters last January tossed out the Liberal (socialist) government.
The Tory, Conservative party won a plurality, but was forced to
organize a minority government as had the Liberals before them.

One of the
major issues in the campaign was gun control. For about a decade,
the Liberals had attempted to convince Canadians that a registry
of the long guns of the good guys would keep the bad guys from
having guns. As crime rose, and suspicious gun owners refused
to obey the law, the Liberal claim to divine knowledge became
tattered.

Legitimacy
was replaced by contempt when it turned out that the registry's
computers had been hacked and used for precision burglaries of
gun collections. The system sold as the way to keep guns out of
the hands of bad guys was actually putting guns in the "wrong
hands" as Sarah Brady likes to put it! (I know, Sarah really means
all non-government employees are the "wrong hands.")

The Liberals
not only looked silly for supporting an obviously failed program,
but their position lost all legitimacy when it was learned that
the gun registry was a cash cow for consultants and favored businesses.

Try as they
might to cover up their financial hanky panky, an audit by the
Auditor General of Canada revealed that the system was one thousand
times over budget and climbing. A second, recent audit revealed
fiscal tactics had been used that would have been admired by an
Enron accountant. Gun registry spending was pulled from many different
budgets without a trace -- no line items flagged the covert movement
of the funds.

The Liberals
were further wounded when an Adscam scandal of similar proportions
came to light where party cronies were awarded contracts because
they were insiders. Payola here, payola there, payola everywhere
was increasingly the image of the Liberal party.

The Tories
campaigned on an "end-the-gun-registry" plank in their platform.
It was very helpful in ousting the Liberals. It focused opinion
on much that was wrong with the Liberal government.

While lacking
the majority (yet) to outright repeal the long gun registry, they
have been taking the money for the registry and giving it to the
Mounties so they can do real police work. They have also proclaimed
an amnesty so unregistered gun owners don't have to register pending
repeal of the law.

Interestingly,
when the Liberals decreed (without a vote in Parliament) many
amnesties to try to snooker Canadians into registering their guns
-- that was good government. Now that the Tories have decreed
an amnesty in the same non-parliamentary fashion (it would be
called an executive order in the U.S.), opponents have decried
the amnesty as a horrible violation of the rule of law. Just ask
the Liberals and their allies in the mainstream (partisan) media.

Not only
is the gun registry heading in the right direction (to the trash
heap), the Tories have sacked Canada's rabidly anti-gun representatives
at the UN's ongoing gun control convocation. The UN has been seeking
for years to impose worldwide gun control (read: disarm American
private gun owners). Canada, along with Japan, has been a major
supporter of a treaty which would have the UN administer an international
gun registry.

With the
still-growing scandal of the Canadian long-gun registry, the UN
will have a harder sell for its own global gun registry. To put
it in other words, guns don't get into criminals hands because
of negligent gun owners, guns get there thanks to gun control
laws!

To add insult
to injury, the UN would like to have its anti-gun powwow over
the week of July 4. This is a plan much like kicking a sleeping
dog. If US gun owners have been too busy until now to pay attention
to the UN's lust for their guns, this little bit of timing might
change all that. Maybe we will come to see the UN as George III's
revenge.

In light
of this, the Canadian election in January takes on a worldwide
significance. The Conservative government of Canada has become
a true ally of the United States, and of individual gun-owning
Americans -- indeed of gun owners everywhere.

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We should
all take heart that a people that seemed to go along with every
oppressive policy of their socialist government finally "pushed
back," as member of Parliament Garry Breitkreuz (Conservative
from Saskatchewan) told me in my Live Fire interview with him
(hear the interview).
Maybe those of us who are Canada's southern neighbor will follow
suit and push back against our own suffocating socialists.

Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun
Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization
of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom
to keep and bear arms.

GOA lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington
and is involved in firearm issues in the states. GOA's work includes providing
legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, the federal firearms law enforcement agency.

Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio
and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's
Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Phil Donahue
show and many others. He has debated Congressmen James Traficant, Jr.
(D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank
Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns
have appeared in newspapers across the country.

He published a book, Armed People Victorious,
in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution
& Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense
of Liberty was published in 2001.

Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature
of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number
of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman
of the American Institute for Cancer Research.